Ultimate Question
Thanks to the calculations of Deep Thought we all know the answer to the ultimate question of life, the Universe and everything is 42. But what is the question? After The Answer It was realised soon after Deep Thought revealed the answer to Phouchg and Loonquawl that something wasn't right. '42' seemed a little, well, pathetic for seven and a half million years of work. Deep Thought quickly pointed out that the problem was that no-one actually knew what the question was; if they did then the answer would make a lot more sense and perhaps Phouchg and Loonquawl wouldn't get lynched by the massing crowds outside after all. Unfortunately Deep Thought was not powerful enough to calculate the question, but foretold that there would "one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate", and then offered to help them to design this greatest computer of all space-time dedicated to finding the question. And he also named this computer for them, "And it shall be called ... The Earth." Searching For The Question Due to the difficulty in finding the question, The Earth needed such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself formed a part of the program. The Earth was to be a planet teeming with life which the planet builders of Magrathea started building as soon as Deep Thought had finalised the plans. Then the program started, a program which would take ten million years to run. Unfortunately, for the hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings who were financing all this, the Vogons decided to destroy the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass a five minutes before the program readout was complete. Attempts to retrieve the answer from the only human being who was on the Earth when the Vogons arrived that hadn't been turned into dust were unsuccessful; apparently the human in question, Arthur Dent, was rather selfishly fond of his brain and wouldn't allow it to be removed. Great fun can be had in designing and proposing Ultimate Questions, however there are a simple set of filters to determine their validity: #Deep Thought delivered the answer in the non-Earth language of the hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings. It was the Babel Fish that translated the historical record as saying "Forty-Two". Because the Babel Fish was in the ear of an Earth humand who calculated his restaurant tips in base 10, the number represents a smallish number, base 10 forty-two, equivalent to the base 2 101010. If it were anything else, Arthur would have known that; so, no mucking about with the number answer. #The Answer, forty-two, was the result of Deep Thought's program which the technicians had designated should answer the Ultimate Question, "...of Life, the Universe, and Everything". They then received confirmation from Deep Thought that there was an answer, a simple answer. So, nothing tricky about applying the answer. #The Book suggested that it would answer all of the philosophical questions including: "What is the meaning of Life?, "Why are we here?", and "Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work?" So, the question must be broad and not Earth-centric (after all, The Earth was created to find the question); it must take in the majesty, scope, and smells of an entire universe, and any god or gods at work there. However the answer may have eventually been extracted from Arthur Dent's brain, without the use of sharp cutting implements. Whilst marooned on Earth two million years before he was born, Arthur managed to find a possible question with the help of Ford Prefect using a set of home made Scrabble tiles. The answer encoded in Arthur's brain, through the random pulling of tiles, was: :What do you get if you multiply six by nine? Note: if you are currently thinking that in base 13 6 x 9 = 42 which is 54 in base 10 then the author recommends you leave your computer immediately and do something else with your life before you realise how truly sad it really is. The Question: What is Total Pair of Dice, or What is total paradise? if you add up the sides on a dice 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 21 X 2 = 42. "To be or not to be." That is the question, as stated by Shakespear in Hamlet, which we all know, an infinite number of monkeys locked in a room with type writers will eventually come up with. 2b or -2b = the absolute value of 42 The Ultimate Cock Up After ten million years of calculation involving much anguish and suffering for the life forms living on the Earth the Ultimate Question has never been found. Arthur and Ford found their way to Earth on a Golgafrinchan ship which promptly crashed, stranding the entire useless middle third of Golgafrinchan society on Earth. The Golgafrinchans soon replaced the native people of the Earth, thus ruining the program and leaving the Ultimate Question unknown. This however maybe a good thing; many philosophers theorise that if both the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer were ever to be found at the same time then the Universe would disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and strange. Some philosophers conject that this has already happened. Category:Content